Based on a talk given by Ajahn Brahmavamso to lay
people at the Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre, Nollamara, Western
Australia, on 19th of October 2001

Sometime ago, I was invited to the West Perth Observatory as part of
the Centenary Federation celebrations in Western Australia. The
youth groups of W.A. organised all the events. One of the events
they presented was entitled 'Our Place in Space'. The idea was to
try and find out whether the future would be one which followed
science or one which would follow religion. They wanted to see how
those two, so called contradictory approaches to life, would pan out
into the future. So they invited representatives from a couple of
religions. I represented the Buddhists, and a teacher from a
prestigious Christian school represented the Christians. The State
Astronomer and a young person from the University of WA, who was
about to get a PhD in physics, were also on the panel, representing
Astronomy and Physics. What they didn't know was that before I was a
monk I was a theoretical physicist. So, I knew what Buddhists know
and I also knew what they know. It was a bit unfair, but really good
fun. It was good fun talking to the audience about Buddhism,
religion and science, and how they come together. There are dangers
in religion and science, but they can be used to help people to find
a way through their lives in wise, compassionate and effective ways.

The End of the Universe

I started by explaining a few things about Buddhism that many people
do not know. Buddhism is so extensive that there are still many
things that people in the West don't know about this great religion,
especially from the old Scriptures, the suttas. For instance, do you
know who the first man in space was? No, it certainly wasn't Yuri
Gagarin. It was Venerable Rohitassa! (AN IV, 45)

I think you all know that if you really get your meditation
together, it is possible to levitate. One of the stories in the
suttas tells the story of a hermit who lived alone in the forest. He
developed his meditation and learned how to rise into the air and
fly. This particular hermit wasn't just an ordinary levitator, he
was one of the best levitators there has ever been. He took
levitation to new heights and 'raised the bar', as it were! Because
he could go so fast, it was said faster than an arrow, he decided to
try and find out where the universe ends. He flew for many, many,
many years, and he still could not find the end of the universe. He
went beyond the solar systems into deep space using the power of the
mind. People often say that's just belief. It's just not real. But
later on I'll mention a few facts that show that it probably was
real and certainly possible. He went on for many tens of years, and
died on the way, never finding an end to the universe.

Being reborn in one of the heavenly realms Venerable Rohitassa came
to the Buddha and told him the story of his previous life. That as a
hermit, he'd levitated and flew on "for ever and ever and ever",
dying on the journey without reaching the end of the cosmos. He was
not the first cosmonaut or astronaut, he was the first monkanaut!
The Buddha rebuked him, saying that that's not the way to find the
end of the universe. Instead, the Buddha emphatically said that the
beginning and the end of the universe can only be found by
investigating within. This gave the answer to one of the questions
that people so often ask of Buddhists: "Who do Buddhists believe
created this universe?" A scientist would reword the same question
as, "What is the origin of this universe?" The answer is that the
beginning and end of the universe are to be found within your own
body and mind. You are its creator!

Remembering Past Lives

Buddhism is founded on meditation, and meditation can reveal many,
many things, especially deep memories from the past. Monks, nuns,
and ordinary meditators can reach such deep meditations that they
can not only levitate, but they can remember previous lives! Many
people can actually do this. When you come out of a deep meditation
you have incredible energy. Afterwards you won't be able to go to
sleep, nor will you be able to go and watch TV, because the mind
will be too full of its own joy and happiness. Moreover, the mind is
so empowered that you can make suggestions to it, suggestions that
you would not normally be able to fulfill. But empowered by deep
meditation, you can follow the suggestions. I've actually taught
this special meditation to people on meditation retreats, because on
meditation retreats some get deep results. People sometimes get
memories of when they were babies, and then of being in their
mother's womb. If they are lucky they get memories of when they were
a very old person, i.e. memories from a past life! One of the
important things with those past life memories is that they are very
real to the person experiencing them. It's as if you are back there
experiencing it. Anyone who has had a memory like that has no doubt
in their mind about past lives. It's not a theory any more. Such
memories are like remembering where you were this morning when you
had breakfast. You have no doubts that that was you this morning,
having that breakfast. You didn't imagine it. With the same clarity,
or even greater clarity, you remember that that very old person was
you, only it wasn't a few hours ago, it was many decades ago. It was
a different time, a different body and a different life. Now if
people can do that on nine day meditation retreats, imagine what you
would do if you were a monk or a nun, who meditates not just for a
weekend, or for nine days, but nine years, twenty-nine, thirty-nine,
or fifty-nine years. Imagine how much power you could generate in
that meditation. Now imagine how much more power you could generate
if you were a Buddha with an Enlightened mind.

Now you know what to do to discover for yourself if you've lived
before. Meditate. I don't mean just meditating to get rid of stress
and make your self calm. I mean really meditate, deeply. Meditate to
get your mind into what we call the Jhanas. Those are deep states of
absorption, where the body disappears. You don't feel. You can't
see. You can't hear. You're absolutely inside the mind. You have no
thoughts but you are perfectly aware. You are blissed out. The
method, the instructions for the experiment, are very clearly laid
down. Even in my little book "The Basic Method of Meditation" all
the steps are there. Follow them, and invest the resources necessary
for doing that experiment not just one weekend retreat, but many
weekend retreats, and sometimes many years of meditating. If you
want to follow that 'scientific method', you have to enter into a
Jhana. And then, after you emerge from that state, you ask yourself,
"What is my earliest memory?" You can keep going back in your mind,
and eventually you will remember. You will see for yourself the
experience of past lives. Then you know. Yes, it is true! You have
had the experience for yourself.

The Buddha said he did
remember past lives, many past lives, many aeons of past lives. He
said specifically that he remembered ninety-one aeons. That's ninety
big bangs, the time before and the time afterwards, huge spaces of
time. That's why the Buddha said there was not just one universe,
but many universes. We are not talking about parallel universes as
some scientists say. We are talking about sequential universes, with
what the Buddha called sanvattati vivattati. This is Pali, meaning
the unfolding of the universe and the infolding of it, beginnings
and endings.

The suttas even give a measure for the lifetime of a universe. When
I was a theoretical physicist, my areas of expertise were the very
small and the very large; fundamental particle physics and
astrophysics. They were the two aspects that I liked the most, the
big and the small. So I knew what was meant by the age of a universe
and what a 'big bang' was all about. The age of a universe, the last
time I looked in the journals, was somewhere about seventeen
thousand million years. In the Buddhist suttas they say that about
thirty seven thousand million years is a complete age. When I told
that to the state astronomer he said yes, that estimate was in the
ball park, it was acceptable. The person who was the convener of the
Our Place in Space seminar made a joke about the fact that a hundred
or two hundred years ago, Christianity said the universe was about
seven thousand years old. That estimate certainly isn't acceptable,
the Buddhist one is!

It is remarkable that there was a cosmology in Buddhism twenty-five
centuries ago that doesn't conflict with modern physics. Even what
astronomers say are galaxies, the Buddha called wheel systems. If
any of you have ever seen a galaxy, you will know there are two
types of galaxy. First, there is the spiral galaxy. The Milky Way is
one of those. Have you seen a spiral galaxy? It is like a wheel! The
other type is the globular cluster, which looks like a wheel with a
big hub in the middle. 'Wheels' is a very accurate way of describing
galaxies. This was explained by someone twenty five centuries ago,
when they did not have telescopes! They didn't need them, they could
go there themselves!

There is a lot of interesting stuff in the old suttas, even for
those of you who like weird stuff. Some times people ask this
question, "Do Buddhists believe in extra terrestrial beings, in
aliens?" Would an alien landing here upset the very foundation of
Buddhism? When I was reading through these old suttas I actually
found a reference to aliens! It's only a very small sutta, which
said that there are other world systems with other suns, other
planets, and other beings on them. That's directly from the
Anguttara Nikaya. (AN X, 29)

The Ghost in the Machine

During the seminar at the West Perth Observatory, one of the
audience put their hand up and asked, "Why is it that when I look
through a telescope I feel that my religion is challenged?" She was
a Catholic. She explained that she felt scared when she looked
through a telescope, because what she saw did not agree with what
she read in her bible. As a Buddhist you don't need to be afraid. I
took that question and turned it back on to the scientists by
asking, "What if you looked through the opposite end of the
telescope to investigate the one who is looking? I think you
scientists would be scared. You would be afraid if you turned the
telescope inwards and looked into yourselves, and asked who is
looking at all of this?" Part of the problem with science is that it
is all 'out there'. It's always a person looking through the
telescope, looking at the apparatus, but never reflecting back to
see who is actually looking at all this. Who is doing this?

When the discussion was starting to get a bit dull, I decided to
stir up the State Astronomer by talking about life. Any scientists
here would know that quantum mechanics, or quantum theory, describes
the world as composed of wave functions. The wave function specifies
the probability of an observable event. However, when life gets
involved, when an observation is made, the wave function collapses
and reality as we know it occurs. There has to be observation, a
life there, to make it happen. The quantum theory needed an
observer, a life, to give meaning to the equations. After the
quantum revolution in physics, an objective universe, independent of
life, became nonsensical.

Another fundamental law of physics is called the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, which says that entropy always increases. In other
words, life gets more disordered, even more chaotic. However,
recently someone won the Nobel Prize for proving an exception, that
when there is a closed system that includes life, entropy decreases!
Life gives order to chaos. That disproved the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. Because of life we get organisation rather than
disorder. The universe is a closed system and it has got life in it.
That's why there is organisation.

When I was at university, life was what the physicists called, the
'ghost in the machine'. The 'ghost in the machine' is what messed up
all the objective theories. This ghost scared the lab-coats off many
a scientist!

Following Beliefs Blindly

This method that we take as science in the universities, in the
labs, and in the hospitals often suffers from the same disease as
religion dogmatism. You know what religious dogmatism is like. We
have a belief and whether it fits with experience or not, whether
it's useful or not, whether it's conducive to people's happiness,
harmony, and peace in the world or not, we follow it just because
that's our belief. But following beliefs blindly, dogmatically, is
just a recipe for violence and suffering.

One of the beautiful things about Buddhism that encouraged me to
become a Buddhist when I was young, and which keeps me as a Buddhist
now, is that questioning is always encouraged. You do not need to
believe. In one of the tales from the ancient texts the Buddha gave
a teaching to his chief monk, Venerable Sariputta. After giving the
teaching, the Buddha asked his chief monk, "Sariputta, do you
believe what I just taught?" Sariputta, without any hesitation, said
"No I don't believe it, because I haven't experienced it yet". The
Buddha said, "Well done! Well done! Well done!" That is the attitude
to encourage in all disciples, either of religion or science. Not to
believe, but to keep an open mind until they've had the true
experience. This attitude goes against dogmatism, it runs counter to
fundamentalism, which one doesn't only see in religion, but which
one also sees in science.

'The eminence of a great scientist', the old saying goes, 'is
measured by the length of time they obstruct progress in their
field'.

The more famous the scientist, the more prominent they are, the more
their views are taken to be gospel truth. Their fame stops other
people challenging them; it delays the arrival of a better 'truth'.
In Buddhism when you find a better truth, use it at once.

The Problem with Dogmatism

There is an old story, from the time of the Buddha, about two
friends who went looking for treasure in a town that had been
abandoned. (DN 23.29) First they found some hemp and decided to make
two bundles of that hemp and carry it away. They would be able to
sell it when they got back home. Soon after they had made these big
bundles of hemp they came across some hempen cloth. One of the men
said, "What do I need the hemp for? The cloth is better". The other
man said, "No this is already well bound up, I've carried it for so
long already, I'll keep my load of hemp". Then they found some flax,
some flaxen cloth, some cotton, and some cotton cloth, and each time
the man carrying the hemp said, "No, the hemp is okay for me", while
his friend changed his load for that which was more valuable. Later
on they found some silver, and then some gold. Each time one man
would always change what he was carrying for something better, but
the other man stubbornly kept his bundle of hemp. When they got home
the man who carried the gold was very popular with his family. As
for the man who carried the hemp, his family was not happy with him
at all! Why don't we change our views, our ideas, when we see
something better? The reason we don't do that is because of
attachment. This is my view. We are comfortable with the old views,
even though we know they are wrong. We don't really want to change.
Sometimes our self image is bound up with those views. Like the
scientist who is bound up with his achievements, bound up with what
he's seen so far, he or she resists new ideas.

This is the problem called dogmatism. Sometimes when I talk about
levitation, people say levitation doesn't exist, it's just myth.
Wait until you see someone levitate! If you saw someone levitate, if
the three monks here rose up about two or three feet, wouldn't that
be challenging?

Sorry, we can't do that in public. It's against our rules. One of
the reasons we can't demonstrate psychic powers in front of people
is that if we did, someone would probably record it on a video
camera and send it to a television channel. Then everybody, even
from overseas, would come to Perth. Not to listen to the Dhamma, not
to hear about Buddhism, but just to see the monks do their tricks.
Then we would be pressured into giving demonstrations all the time.
It would be like a circus, not a temple. The point is that monks are
not here to demonstrate tricks.

Even if a monk did perform a miracle, many people would say: "This
is just a trick. It's done with special effects. They are not really
levitating". If you don't want to believe it, you won't. This is the
problem with dogmatism. What you don't want to see, you do not see.
When you don't want to believe it, you go into denial. This is why I
say that many scientists are in denial about the nature of the mind.

The Boy with No Brain

This is a well known case that throws a challenge to modern science.
It's the case of Professor John Lorber and the student with no
brain.[1] Professor Lorber was a neurologist at Sheffield University
who held a research chair in paediatrics. He did a lot of research
on hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. The student's physician at
the university noticed that the youth had a slightly larger than
normal head, and so referred him to Professor Lorber, simply out of
interest. When they did a brain scan on the student they saw that
his cranium was filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid. The student
had an IQ of 126, had gained a first-class honours degree in
mathematics, and was socially completely normal. And yet the boy had
virtually no brain. This is not just a fabrication; research has
found other people with no brains. During the first world war, when
there was such carnage in the trenches of Europe. Soldiers had their
skulls literally blown apart by bullets and shrapnel. It is said
that the doctors found that some of the shattered heads of those
corpses were empty. There was no brain. The evidence of those
doctors was put aside as being too difficult to understand. But
Professor Lorber went forward with his findings, and published them,
to the great disturbance of the scientific community. Billions of
dollars are going into research on the brain. Current views hold
that imbalances in the brain are causing your depressions, your lack
of intelligence, or your emotional problems. And yet here is
evidence that shows you don't need much of a brain to have an
excellent mind.

A doctor friend in Sydney discussed this case with me once. He said
he'd seen those CT scans, and confirmed that the case was well known
in the medical community. He explained that that boy only had what
was called a reptilian brain stem. Usually, any baby born with just
a reptilian brain stem, without the cortex and the other stuff, will
usually die straight away or within a few days after birth. A
reptilian brain stem is not capable of maintaining basic bodily
functions such as breathing, heart or liver. It's not enough to keep
the higher brain functions going. It's not enough for speech, not
enough for intelligence, certainly not enough for being an honours
student in mathematics. This doctor said, "Ajahn Brahm, you wouldn't
believe the problem that this is causing in my field of science. It
shatters so much past research. It is challenging so many drug
companies that are making billions of dollars in profits". Because
dogmatic scientists can't understand how a person with virtually no
brain can be intelligent, they are just burying the findings at the
back of the filing cabinet, classifying it as an anomaly. But truth
just won't go away.

The Mind and the Brain

As soon as you start to include the mind, this 'ghost in the
machine', in the equations, scientists tend to become discomfited.
They take refuge in dogma, and say, "No, that cannot exist". I
really took the Sate Astronomer to task over such dogmatism in
science.

As far as Buddhism is concerned there are six senses. Not just the
five senses of science, namely sight, sound, smell, taste and touch
but in addition the mind. From the very beginning in Buddhism, mind
has been the sixth sense. Twenty-five centuries ago, the sixth sense
was well recognised. So this is not changing things to keep up with
modern times; this was so from the very beginning. The sixth sense,
the mind, is independent of the other five senses. In particular the
mind is independent of the brain. If you volunteer to have a brain
transplant with me you take my brain and I take your brain I will
still be Ajahn Brahm and you will still be you. Want to try it? If
it was possible and it happened, you would still be yourself. The
mind and the brain are two different things. The mind can make use
of the brain but it doesn't have to.

Some of you may have had out of the body experiences. These out of
the body experiences have recently been the subject of mainstream
scientific research. Out of the body experiences are now a
scientific fact! I like to stir people up by saying things like
that. Recently I saw that Dr. Sam Parnia, a researcher from the
University of Southampton Medical School, has given a paper, stating
that consciousness survives death.[2] He said that he did not know
how it happens, or why it happens, but, he says, it does happen. His
evidence was gathered from people who have had out of the body
experiences in his hospital. Dr Parnia, investigated and interviewed
many, many patients. The information which they gave him, as a cool
headed scientist, said yes, those people were conscious during the
time they were dead. What was especially very convincing was that
often they could actually describe to the doctor the medical
procedures that were done during the time when they were clinically
dead. They could describe it as if they were looking at their body
from a position above the table. But how that happens Dr. Parnia
can't explain. Why it happens he can't explain. But other medical
findings also support the above. Finally, their findings replicated
the work done earlier by Dr. Raymond A. Moody in the United
States.[3]

The evidence proved to those hard nosed doctors that out of body
experiences do happen. But how could they happen? If we agree that
the mind can be independent of the body, then we have a plausible
explanation. The brain doesn't need to be functioning for a mind to
exist. The scientific facts are there, the evidence is there, but a
lot of scientists don't like to admit those facts. They prefer to
close their eyes because of dogmatism.

Come and See for Yourself

If you had just one person who had been confirmed as medically dead
who could describe to the doctors, as soon as they were revived,
what had been said, and done during that period of death, wouldn't
that be pretty convincing? When I was doing elementary particle
physics there was a theory that required for its proof the existence
of what was called the 'W' particle. At the cyclotron in Geneva,
CERN funded a huge research project, smashing atoms together with an
enormous particle accelerator, to try and find one of these 'W'
particles. They spent literally hundreds of millions of pounds on
this project. They found one, just one 'W' particle. I don't think
they have found another since. But once they found one 'W' particle,
the researchers involved in that project were given Nobel prizes for
physics. They had proved the theory by just finding the one 'W'
particle. That's good science. Just one is enough to prove the
theory.

When it comes to things we don't like to believe, they call just one
experience, one clear factual undeniable experience, an anomaly.
Anomaly is a word in science for disconcerting evidence that we can
put in the back of a filing cabinet and not look at again, because
it's threatens our world view. It undermines what we want to
believe. It is threatening to our dogma. However, an essential part
of the scientific method is that theories have to be abandoned in
favour of the evidence, in respect of the facts. The point is that
the evidence for a mind independent of the brain is there. But once
we admit that evidence, and follow the scientific method, then many
cherished theories, what we call 'sacred cows' will have to be
abandoned.

When we see something that challenges any theory, in science or in
religion, we should not ignore the evidence. We have to change the
theory to fit the facts. That is what we do in Buddhism. All the
Dhamma of the Buddha, everything that he taught, if it does not fit
the experience, then we should not accept it. We should not accept
the Buddha's words in contradiction of experience. That is clearly
stated in the kalama Sutta. (AN III, 65) The Buddha said do not
believe because it is written in the books, or even if I say it.
Don't just believe because it is tradition, or because it sounds
right, or because it's comforting to you. Make sure it fits your
experience. The existence of mind, independent of the brain, fits
experience. The facts are there.

Sometimes, however, we
cannot trust the experts. You cannot trust Ajahn Brahm. You cannot
trust the scientific journals. Because people are often biased.
Buddhism gives you a scientific method for your practice. Buddhism
says, do the experiment and find out for your self if what the
Buddha said is true or not. Check out your experience. For example,
develop the method to test the truth of past lives, rebirth and
reincarnation. Don't just believe it with faith, find out for
yourself. The Buddha has given a scientific experiment that you can
repeat.

Until you understand the law of kamma, which is part of Buddhism,
kamma is just a theory. Do you believe that there is a God 'up
there' who decides when you can be happy or unhappy? Or is
everything that happens to you just chance? Your happiness and your
suffering in life, your joy, your pain and disappointments, are they
deserved? Are you responsible or is it someone else's fault? Is it
mere chance that we are rich or poor? Is it bad luck when we are
sick and die at a young age? Why? You can find the true answer for
yourself. You can experience the law of kamma through deep
meditation. When the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya,
the two knowledge's he realized just before his Enlightenment were
the knowledge from experience of the truth of rebirth, and the
knowledge from experience of the Law of kamma. This was not theory,
not just more thinking, not something worked out from discussions
around the coffee table this was realization from deep experience of
the nature of mind. You too can have that same experience.

All religions in the world except Buddhism maintain the existence of
a soul. They affirm a real 'self', an 'essence of all being', a
'person', a 'me'. Buddhism says there is no self! Who is right? What
is this 'ghost in the machine'? Is it a soul, is it a being, or is
it a process? What is it? When the Buddha said that there is no one
in here, he never meant that to be just believed, he meant that to
be experienced. The Buddha said, as a scientific fact, that there is
no 'self'. But like any scientific fact, it has to be experienced
each one for themselves, paccattam veditabbo viññūhi. Many of you
chant those Pali words every day. It is basic scientific Buddhism.
You have to keep an open mind. You don't believe there is 'no self',
you don't believe there is a 'self' both beliefs are dogmatism. Keep
an open mind until you complete the experiment. The experiment is
the practice of sila, samadhi and pañña, (virtue, meditation and
insight). The experiment is Buddhist practice. Do the same
experimental procedures that the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree.
Repeat it and see if you get the same results. The result is called
Enlightenment.

Men and women have
repeated that experiment many times over the centuries. It is in the
laboratory of Buddhist practice that the Enlightened Ones, the
Arahants, arise. The Arahants are the ones who have done the
experiment and found the result. That's why Buddhism always has been
the scientific way. It is the way of finding out for your self the
truth of Enlightenment.

Buddhism is also the scientific way of discovering the truth about
happiness, what most people are interested in. What is happiness?
Some students from our local Islamic school came to visit our
monastery a short while ago. I performed a little party trick for
them, which was also an illuminating way to demonstrate the
existence of the mind. I was trying to explain Buddhism, so I asked
them:

"Are you happy? Put your hands up if you are happy now".

At first there was no response. Then one person responded and raised
their hand.

"Oh! You're all miserable?" I said "Only one person, come on! Are
you happy or not?"

More students put there hands up.

"Okay, all those people who put their hands up saying they are
happy, with your index finger can you now point to that happiness?
Can you give it coordinates in space?" They couldn't locate that
happiness.

It's hard to locate happiness, isn't it? Have you ever been
depressed? Next time you are depressed, try to point to that feeling
with your index finger! You will find that you cannot locate
depression, or happiness, in space. You cannot give it coordinates,
because these things reside in the mind, not in the body, not in
space. The mind is not located in space. That's why after a person
dies, if they become a ghost they can appear all over the world
immediately. People sometimes ask me, "How can that happen?" How can
a person who dies, say in New York, appear immediately in Perth? It
is because the mind is not located in space, that's why. This is why
you cannot point to happiness, you cannot point to depression, but
they are real. Are you imagining the happiness? Do you imagine the
depression? It's real. You all know that. But you cannot locate it
in three dimensional space. Happiness, depression, and many other
real things, all live in mind-space.

The mind is not in the
brain, it's not in the heart. We have seen that you could have no
brain but still have a mind. You could take out your heart, and have
a bionic heart, or a heart transplant, and you would still be you.
This understanding of the mind is why Buddhists have no objection at
all to cloning. You want to clone me, go for it! But don't think
that if you clone Ajahn Brahm that you'll be able to have one Ajahn
Brahm who goes to Singapore this evening, another one who stays in
Perth for next Friday night's talk, plus one who can stay in
Bodhinyana monastery, one who can go to Sydney, and one who can go
to Melbourne. If you clone me, the person who looks like me will be
completely different in personality, knowledge, inclination, and
everything else. People clone Toyota cars in the same way. They look
exactly the same but the performance really depends on the driver
inside the car. That's all cloning is, it's just a replicating a
body. Sure it looks the same, but is the body all that a person is?
Haven't you seen identical twins? Are identical twins the same
personality? Have they got the same intelligence? Have they got the
identical inclinations? Do they even like the same food? The answer
is usually no.

Why do people have this problem about cloning? Clone as much as you
want. You are just creating more bodies for streams of consciousness
to come into. Those streams of consciousness come from past lives.
What's the problem? You would never be able to predict the result.
Suppose you took Einstein's brain, extracted some of his DNA, and
cloned a new Einstein. He might look the same, but I guarantee he
won't be half as clever.

If people want to proceed with stem cell research, which is going to
help humanity, then why not? In stem cell research there is no
'being' involved. The 'being' hasn't come in yet. In Buddhism, it is
understood that the 'being' descends into the mother's womb at any
time from conception until birth. Sometimes it doesn't even go into
the womb at all and the foetus is stillborn. The objections to stem
cell research are dogmatic, unscientific, and uncompassionate.
They're foolish as far as I'm concerned. I think sometimes that I
would tear my hair out if I weren't a monk.

If you want to look at the
scientific evidence for rebirth, check out Professor Ian Stevenson.
He spent his whole life researching rebirth on a solid scientific
basis at the University of Virginia.[4] Chester Carlson, the
inventor of xerography, (encouraged by his wife) offered funds for
an endowed chair at the University to enabled Professor Stevenson to
devote himself full-time to such research. If it weren't for the
fact that people do not want to believe in rebirth, Dr. Ian
Stevenson would be a world famous scientist now. He even spent a
couple of years as a visiting fellow of Magdalene College in Oxford,
so you can see that this is not just some weird professor; he has
all of the credentials of a respected Western academic.

Dr. Stevenson has over 3000 cases on his files. One interesting
example was the very clear case of a man who remembered many details
from his past life, with no way of gaining that information from any
other source. That person died only a few weeks before he was
reborn! Which raises the question, for all those months that the
foetus was in the womb, who was it? As far as Buddhism is concerned,
the mother kept that foetus going with her own stream of
consciousness. But when another stream of consciousness entered,
then the foetus became the new person. That is one case where the
stream of consciousness entered the mother's womb when the foetus
was almost fully developed. That can happen. That was understood by
Buddhism twenty five centuries ago. If the stream of consciousness
doesn't enter the mother's womb, the child is a stillborn. There is
a heap of evidence supporting that.

Science and Buddhism

When a Buddhist looks through a telescope, they are not scared by
what they might find. They are not scared of science. Science is an
essential part of Buddhism. If science can disprove rebirth, then
Buddhists should give up the idea of rebirth. If science disproves
non-self, and shows there is a self, then all Buddhists should
abandon non-self. If science proves there is no such thing as kamma,
but instead there is a big God up in the sky, then all Buddhists
should believe in God. That is, if it's provable science. Buddhism
has no sacred cows. However, I encourage you to do those experiments
for yourselves. I'll bet you will find out that there is no one 'in
there'. You will find out about kamma. You will find out you've been
here before, that this is not your first life. If you don't behave
yourselves in this life, you'll have another life to come yet. Do
you think you are finished with nappies, with school? Do you really
want to go through all that again? If not be careful.

So, here is my thinking about science and Buddhism. I think that
Buddhism is pure science, a science that doesn't stop 'out there',
but also investigates the mind, the 'being', the 'ghost in the
machine'. And it doesn't disregard any anomalies. Buddhism takes
everything as its data, especially experience, and looks at it
scientifically. It is incredibly successful.

One of the reasons why people celebrate science is because of all of
its achievements in technology. One of the reasons why Buddhism is
growing these days is because of all of its achievements in the
'technology of the mind'. It solves problems. It explains mental
difficulties. Buddhism succeeds in solving those inner problems
because it has all these strategies, these ancient 'gizmos', which
actually work. If you try some of these Buddhist gizmos, you will
find out for yourself that they produce the goods, they solve your
inner suffering and pain. That is why Buddhism is growing. I think
that Buddhism will supplant science!